Special Lessons

If we want new answers to old self-defeating questions such as "Why me?" -- we're going to have to use our mind in a new way. If we want new answers, real answers, we need new questions. First, we must realize that our stressful experiences are not caused by people or events. They are caused by our reactions to them. I know this is different than most of us feel, and yet, we can see that we have changed the people and even the events in our...

Most of us hold the unquestioned belief that our hearts and minds are at peace before one of life's "waves" washes in to disturb us. But if we take away the prejudice of self-pleasing images -- and add the ease with which we are disturbed by unwanted moments -- we have good cause to suspect something entirely different about ourselves. Could a truer view of what takes place in such times of...

When we're negative -- in a "power struggle" with someone over whatever is being contested -- we're reduced to being little more than a puppet. We're literally "strung out" -- momentarily animated -- by unseeing forces in us that can only do one thing: mechanically oppose whatever seems to oppose them.

When suddenly -- through a sense of similarity -- I'm made present to some positive, uplifting quality outside and within myself, I am happy. I lend myself to it without doubt. But in moments I am introduced to something negative inside myself by an event that I don't want, I have to find a reason for it being there.

We act every moment in our life from one thing and one thing only: that which (in us) is the knower of that moment. We act from what we know. As we are now, our actions -- based on what we know -- are predicated on a certain knowledge that appears with the reaction that tells us the meaning of the moment. And no more do we receive and are told the meaning of the moment...

How many times in your life have you acted not just against yourself, but perhaps against others because your actions were uninformed, and you were moved prematurely into a conclusion? Too many times to count really. And most of these premature conclusions had some negative taint to them -- judging somebody, arriving at some insistence based on incomplete information.

At some point, our appetite for a life that will satisfy or stimulate us can no longer be fulfilled by the life that we see around us. It just doesn't work anymore. We've tried and tried to find ways to feed ourselves, but what we have found (mostly) is that with all we've done from ourselves based on how we look at life, we never feel "I don't need anything more than this right now."

Living from our present life-level, we are almost always nervous about what's going on around us. Why? Because we still live with the mistaken notion that who we are is somehow affected or determined by what happens to us. Events may happen to you, but you are not the event. Just as clouds are not the sky, you are not what moves through you. You are not who you think you are.

Our fears and worries, our ambitions make something of us, don't they? The fact is, everything makes something of us because there's something in us that makes of it what is does, which is the real meaning of the old expression: a tempest in a teapot.

How many of you know that, on any given day, you will be standing before a wall? Every single day, to one degree or another, a person runs into something like this: "God, I don't want that," "I wish I wasn't feeling this way," "Why are they doing those things they're doing?" "Oh my God, I've put on 5 pounds," "Oh no, look at the economy"... any one of a thousand different ways in which...

It's safe to say that most us wrestle with some kind of frustration on a daily basis. This kind of dissatisfaction can be with ourselves, over what we can or can't get done -- or with others, who may deny us our wish or otherwise disappoint our expectations. Accordingly, we can feel as though we are blocked, incapable, unable, not strong or wise enough to move ahead as we would.

Following is a small excerpt from a "fireside chat" between Guy Finley and Dr. Ellen Dickstein as they explored the topic of The Power to Release Regrets and Get Over Guilt. Guy: We don't "learn" the way that we think we learn... which is by reliving things. No one learns anything by reliving a situation. Ellen: This reminds me of something you said that I found very interesting...